UNUnited Nations Economic Commission for Europe

Press Release

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NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATE JOSEPH STIGLITZ TO GIVE
GUNNAR MYRDAL LECTURE

To speak on "The process of European integration
and the future of Europe"

Palais des Nations (Conference Room XIX), Geneva
11 February 2004, 2.30 p.m.

Geneva, 9 February 2004 - This year's Gunnar Myrdal Lecture will be delivered by Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics. The topic will be "The Process of European Integration and the Future of Europe". The lecture will take place on Wednesday, 11 February 2004 at the Palais des Nations (Conference Room XIX) at 2.30 p.m.

Joseph E. Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana, USA in 1943. After a distinguished academic career at MIT, Yale and Stanford, he joined the Clinton administration in 1993 as member (later Chairman) of the Council of Economic Advisors and subsequently served as Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is now Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia University in New York.

The accomplishments of Professor Stiglitz are numerous: he helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but also of policy analysts. He has also made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D. His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

Recognized around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives. His latest book, The Roaring Nineties, contains an account of his time at the White House during the Clinton boom years.

The Lectures are named in honour of Gunnar Myrdal, first Executive Secretary of the UNECE (1947-1957), who himself received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974. This is the second in a new series devoted to major international economic problems. The UNECE 2003 Myrdal Lecture was given by Nobel prize winner Professor Douglass C. North.

For additional information, please contact:

Information Service
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
Palais des Nations
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Phone: +41(0)22 917 44 44
Fax: +41(0)22 917 05 05
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org

Ref: ECE/GEN/04/P05